Voting With Your Fork

Groups promoting political and cultural nationalism—Red Power, Black Power, Brown Power—created alternative food production and distribution systems such as co-ops. They also boycotted and struck against foods and practices they felt wronged people—farmworkers and low-wage laborers—or the environment. Through “for and against” philosophies expressed on T-shirts, recyclable bags, buttons, bumper stickers, books, and posters, countercultural advocates connected food and politics in ways that persisted into the 21st century.

First imagined by Marvella Lewis for the Maryland Food Co-Op and re-designed in 1999 by Gnarly Artly, the design of a fist punching through a sandwich incorporated the popular co-op motto used throughout the country.